What if there’s a sim game where you own and take care of an aquarium? Something like Seaman but less weird? That’s what Fishkeeper is by indie devs Blinkclick Games.
In Fishkeeper, you get to take care of an aquarium. This means putting in the fish and other plants and animals that inhibit it, as well as other decorations to your liking.
It’s a sandbox sim, with the aim of making it a safe and easy way to get into owning a real aquarium, and for real hobbyists to experiment with, without actually harming any real animals and plants.
That means Fishkeeper will also model some AI and actual ecosystem. You can’t just plop in any random fish and plant and see it all living all healthy, and it’s also like that in Fishkeeper.
Think Planet Zoo but at the scale of an aquarium, and you’ll get something like Fishkeeper.
Blinkclick Games are now seeking funding via Kickstarter to help support the development of the game. Due to the pandemic, it has been hard for the team to secure a decent deal with publishers and investors and has so turned to the community (and aspiring fishkeepers) to help support their funding.
“When Fishkeeper was announced and became getting popular, the situation in the game dev industry wasn’t that bad, and the team hoped stock market brokers would support them with an investment,” the developers said in a press release. “The time passed, and COVID-19 hit the world harder, even gaming has been affected, so things went wrong.”
As the Kickstarter trailer showed, gameplay looks promising. From building and shaping your custom fish tank to running a tiny submarine toy to take pictures of the fish, there’s a lot going on here that would be interesting to this specific niche of a hobby.
You can check out Fishkeeper’s Kickstarter page here. The game is coming to PC (Steam).